Posted 12:52 AM by sport

Banzai. Seems right that I return to this bullshit after Mother's Day. It's been a month or so of post-death adjustment, and life is life, as it usually is. The above pic was taken on one of the Unassailable Days, part of a weekend in NY's Greenwood Lake many ages ago. Me and Mom and Dad. Happiness and freedom, safety and possibility with the two people I always trusted and enjoyed. Dad let me taste some Lowenbrau beer and I pompously asserted thereafter (to all my school chums) "of course, Lowenbrau is the best beer." As if I had a clue, but yeah, why not? It was, given the particulars.

Recent weeks have been OK thanks to an assortment of factors. Alex's pals Rob, Greg and Dan have hung with the old bastard here at the redoubt; merry times with people young enough to still have some. I now claim Alex's pals as my own. "My own" chums Brian and Sharon have also braved that 1-hour LIRR trek so many of my NYC mates fear and loathe, to join us at the redoubt for a long night's gambol. This is the best therapy, although my shrink is a wonder and keeps me breathing.

The redoubt itself is subject to a number of significant renovations and improvements thanks to the superb wife, and that process speaks of life ongoing and unfolding as well. Enjoying a really fucking good Absinthe named "St. George" made right here in the USA by a small California concern. Sammy Davis Junior has kept us all inspired and entertained, becoming a special favorite of young Miles.

I long for Paris daily. Even go to Google maps to gaze bird's-eye on dear Rue de Martinique, retracing the steps I took daily with Eloise and Sing Sing to the local shops and such on that blessed interruption of brutal time back in March. Lordy I miss my friends in France.

I am even maybe writing some songs. Dunno if I really am or not. I kinda don't give a fuck, except that it's what I figured I "did" for so long that not doing it breeds anxieties worse even than the songs themselves. Who cares.

Here's something I meant to post a long, long time ago and probably didn't. It's a fine, perceptive review of a song of mine, and I even agree with the complaints.

by Will Robinson Sheff

T.S. Eliot once famously wrote, "this is the way the world ends...not with a bang, but a whimper." The work of Mike "Sport" Murphy would deny Elliot even that whimper; Murphy’s "The Night Surrounds" is a narrative of a boring and ridiculous world idiotically refusing to end. Clearly weaned on icons of folk-pop bitterness like Leonard Cohen and Jacques Brel, Murphy’s worldview would be almost wrist-slittingly dark were it not simultaneously so cheekily funny.

"Kettles will be whistling to proclaim with shrill insistence an impending cup of Sanka / and someone will be hearing, and presumably enjoying, something written by Paul Anka" is how Murphy sets the scene at the beginning of the song, immediately creating for the listener a place of such horrific and hilarious blandness it recalls the world of Todd Solondz’s pitch-black comedy "Happiness."

Meanwhile, the band plays soft folk-rock with a polite prettiness that belies Murphy’s almost savagely mean description of the pathetic events unfolding: teenagers around the country all furiously masturbate behind closed bedroom doors while a desperate rock band dreams of whoring themselves out to the first available A&R guy and hypocritical pseudo-intellectuals try to impress each other in boring and long-winded conversations.

Murphy kind of overdoes it a couple of times, when his contemptuous reading of his already-unambiguous lyrics (listen to his phrasing of "true genius" and "substantial issues") borders on dead-horse-beating, but just when the misanthropy is nearing toxic levels, Murphy sweeps all of his pathetic scenarios off of the table like so many chess pieces and, with the chorus, switches to the first person voice, as he himself implores a second person, who may be a character in the song and may actually be the listener, to just sing into the night sky a song that will only be there for the singing and then will fade away forever.

There are still moments of beauty, he tells us, rare and hard to keep and unimportant to the rest of the world though they may be, and these are really the only things that matter.

Quite so, Mr. Sheff, and thanks.
Come, pilgrims... come to the redoubt for some St George and Sammy. I aim to avoid NYC for a while, so come, come to the redoubt. For Calvados and clam pizza. Come! Come! Or don't, prick.

And, for you French people: if ten of you raise a hundred bucks each, I can return. If a hundred of you pitch in 10 bucks each, I'm there. My humble suggestion: a series of small benefit gigs. Earmark some of the take for the "Bring Back Sport" fund. I will play a free show, dedicating an original song for each contributor (sure, the songs may be 10 seconds each, but, merde, still... ) as recompense. Imagine the fun. Discuss it with one another.

I will wait patiently for your response, here at the redoubt, digging Sammy fuckin' Davis fuckin' Junior.